Heard in the Blogosphere
Your New Medical Team:
Algorithms and Physicians
“Algorithms can be put to good use in certain areas of medicine, as complements to, not substitutes for, clinicians. … A good deal of health-care’s benefits may also be in the human interaction
between doctor and patient. Placebo effects can be real and strong. Many people engage the
health system for reassurance and hope, even when no cure is available. … To the extent medical
treatment relies on the human touch, on the trust of patients in their doctors and on physicians’
embodiment of authority, a computer-delivered cure may never feel complete.”
—Austin Frakt, a health economist, on the possibility of machines replacing doctors in The New York Times
“[In-person change-of-shift
reports] forge a more personal connection, so you
see the person and not
just a piece of paper.”
How to Read a Scientific Paper
“What a strange document a scientific journal article is. We work on them for months or even
years. We write them in a highly specialized vernacular that even most other scientists don’t
share. … So for those new to reading journals, welcome. Good luck. And we’re sorry. We’re trying
to write articles comprehensibly, but sometimes our subdiscipline is so hyperspecific that we need
a million acronyms. And sometimes we’re attempting to sound like good scientists by copying the
tone of every article we’ve read. And sometimes we’re just writing badly.”
—Adam Ruben, PhD, on the simple, 10-step process of reading a scientific paper, in Science
The Most Crucial Half-Hour at a Hospital:
The Shift Change
Hospitals are taking a different approach to the way nurses change shifts to reduce the chance
of errors and oversights in the transfer of information. These bedside shift reports, where both
nurses meet with the patient during the handover, are helping nurses and patients communicate
better, according to those who spoke in the Wall Street Journal about these new programs.
“Conducting nurse change-of-shift report at the bedside with the patient and family should
be viewed as a core safety strategy in hospitals today. It is a very tangible way to ensure that
complete and accurate information is shared and there is mutual understanding of the care plan
and other priorities.”
—Beverley Johnson, chief executive officer of the Institute for Patient-and-Family-Centered Care
“I was so hungry for information that I was desperate, but I didn’t want to make anyone angry
or be the meddlesome wife. Shift change would have been a perfect opportunity for a family
member to be present for a little rundown on his current status and expectations for the next
shift. It would definitely help alleviate stress and make them feel more empowered in a seemingly helpless situation.”
—Christine Hernandez, the wife of a patient at the University of Washington
Medical Center who influenced the center’s policy change
“Being at the bedside with another nurse who has taken care of the patient for an entire shift
forges a more personal connection, so you see the person and not just a piece of paper.”
—Kate Miller, RN, a nurse in the general surgery unit at the University of Vermont Medical Center
A Potential Fix for Gender Bias in Research
Experimental drugs are mainly tested in men, and animal research has followed the same pattern,
but the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now trying to bring gender balance all the way down
to the earliest stages of research. As a c ondition of NIH funding, researchers will now have to
include female and male animals in their biomedical studies. Researchers discuss this new provision in NPR’s All Things Considered.
“Eighty percent of drug studies that are done in mice are done in male mice. We’re learning late.
That’s not the best way to do this. We need to study both sexes throughout the entire research
spectrum. … We’re asking scientists to think about sex, to study both male and female animals in
their preclinical research so that we can learn more about both male and female biology.”
—Janine Clayton, MD, director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health at NIH
“Women on average, in North America at least, take more prescription drugs than men do.
Women also go to the doctor more. … They are also for whatever reason more likely to be sensitive to and prone to report feelings of discomfort. We thought, if the NIH is really wanting to
address this, we need tons more studies of just those kinds of factors.”
—Sarah Richardson, a professor in the history and philosophy of science at Harvard University
“Questions around social dynamics and gender get glossed over – especially with animals. There’s
a danger in assuming that a difference noticed between male and female animals stems from
a difference in their basic biology, rather than because of something else, like how the male
animals might have been housed alone while the female animals were housed in groups.”
—Stacey Ritz, PhD, an immunologist at McMaster University
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ASH Clinical News
April 2016